1. The Palestinian conflict

After the creation of the State of Israel and the first Arab- Israeli war, thousands of Palestinians left their country and created a refugee problem in Jordan and Lebanon, where a civil war begun between Christians and Muslims. The situation worsened with the intervention of Syrian and Israeli troops on Lebanese territory. In 1964 the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created as a Palestinian political movement, but military attacks and terrorist activities of Palestinian groups such as al-Fatah, led by Yasir Arafat, were promptly followed by Israeli retaliations.

A permanent tension in the region was the outcome of the refusal of the neighbouring Arab States to recognize the existence of Israel⁴. Nevertheless, the Camp David agreement signed by Israel and Egypt in 1978 and supported by the USA meant the starting point of a permanent peace settlement based on the principle of the recognition of the State of Israel in exchange of land devolution. A similar agreement was reached with Jordan. Lebanon seems to recover from civil war after the withdrawal of the Israeli and Syrian troops.

With respect to the Palestinians inside Israel, a popular movement of opposition against the Israeli presence or intifada started in the 80s. Nevertheless, in 1993 the Israeli government and the PLO reached an agreement in Oslo, based on the recognition of the State of Israel in exchange of the creation of an autonomous Palestinian authority on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In spite of the implementation of certain elements of the agreement, the Palestine State has not been recognized.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues because of the reluctance of the Israeli authorities to accept the existence of the Palestine State, above all with Jerusalem as its capital. On the other hand, there is a political division between the Palestinians. Hamas, a radical Palestinian party, considered a terrorist group, controls Gaza, while al-Fatah, the party of the president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmud Abbas is strong in the West Bank.

2. Cyprus

Cyprus was a British colony until 1960, when it was granted independence. Archbishop Makarios was the first president of a country populated by Greeks and a Turkish minority. In 1963 a civil war took place between Greeks and Turks, and in 1974 Turkey intervened militarily and occupied the North of the island, thus supporting the creation of an independent republic, only recognized by Turkey. Although the frontier was open in 2003 and the following year Cyprus joined the European Union, the situation remains unchanged.

3. Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics (Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia), although their political and ethnic borders were not the same. There were 600.000 Serbs living in Croatia, and 1.300.000 in Bosnia. Actually, the population in Bosnia was mixed: 44% were Muslims, 33% Serbs and 17% Croats. After WWII, Marshall Tito kept the country unified and relatively free from the thigh control of the USSR. When he died in 1980, a collective presidency took the lead of the State.

In 1988 Slobodan Milosevic became president of Serbia, and the fall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the end of the USSR favoured the spread of nationalist feelings. Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence in 1991 against the Serbian intention of playing a preponderant role in a united Yugoslavia. War between Serbia and Croatia broke out and the Serbian army occupied part of the Croatian territory. During the following year UN troops were sent to guarantee the implementation of the ceasefire.

War moved to Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had also been recognized as an independent country in 1992. Nevertheless, Bosnian Serbs were rather in favour of joining Serbia than of recognizing a Muslim leader. Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, supported by Serbia started to fight while Croatia invaded the Northern part of the country. Ethnic cleansing (the systematic elimination of the antagonist ethnic group) took place during the Bosnian war; the worst of these actions took place in Srebrenica, where 8.000 Muslims were killed by Serbian troops. Sarajevo was besieged by the Serb troops. The UN force was unable even to protect civilians and to ensure the distribution of supplies.

When in 1994 a mortar shell killed a number of people in a market of Sarajevo, NATO intervened and bombarded Serbian positions. As a result, the peace conference of Dayton finished the war in 1995: Bosnia remained as an independent country, although composed of two entities, the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croatian federation. NATO troops watched the fulfilment of the accord.

The last chapter of the war of Yugoslavia was the conflict of Kosovo. Kosovo was a Serbian province, inhabited mostly by ethnic Albanians. The elimination of the Kosovar autonomy by Milosevic paved the way to the formation of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In 1999 Serb troops intervened, and NATO attacked Serbia, forcing Milosevic to accept the withdrawal from Kosovo. NATO troops were in charge of maintaining the peace and the UN administered the province. In 2008 Kosovo declared its independence.

Slobodan Milosevic was defeated in the presidential elections of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) of 2000. The following year he was arrested and sent to the UN Criminal Court in The Hague, on charges of war crimes and genocide. He died five years later during the trial.

4. The Middle East and the terrorist threat

On 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked two planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York. As a reaction, the USA attacked Afghanistan, defeated the Taliban government (an Islamic radical group that supported al-Qaeda) and installed a democratic government headed by Hamid Karzai. Although the Taliban control relevant areas of the country, an international coalition remains in Afghanistan to support the new State.

Al-Qaeda terrorism was not confined to America and the Middle East. Terrorist groups killed 200 people in Bali in 2002, 60 in Turkey in 2003 and another 200 in Madrid the following year.

With respect to Iraq, the 2nd Gulf War started on the basis of the alleged existence of chemical and biological weapons in the hands of Saddam Hussein. An international coalition not supported by the UN invaded Iraq and took Baghdad. Although Saddam Hussein was captured and executed, and a democratic government was elected, violence between religious factions and against foreign troops is still common.

Iran became an Islamic Republic after the fall of the shah Reza Pahlevi in 1979. The new leader ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini installed a regime based on the strict observance of the Shariah (Islamic law) and the rule of the Islamic clerics or ulama. The new State was violently anti-American ("the great Satan"), above all because the support of the USA to the shah and the Israeli State. Moreover, all kind of dissidence was repressed. Successive presidential elections, which have given power to different Iranian factions (moderate M. Khatami in 1997, conservative Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and 2009, moderate Hassan Rouhani in 2013) had not changed the traditional political guidelines of the country concerning the antagonism with the State of Israel and mistrust with the USA. Recently, the development of an Iranian nuclear program resulted in economic sanctions for Iran. In 2015, an agreement was reached between Iran and a group of countries (China, France, Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, United States) on the nuclear program, called the "Iran Nuclear Deal". However, American president Donald Trump withdrew from the Plan in 2018.

In Syria the situation became increasingly complex. Since 2011, protests against president Bachar al-Assad led to a civil war between the rebel forces (supported by the United States, Turkey and Saudi Arabia) and the government (supported by Russia and Iran). In addition, in 2013 the so-called Islamic State proclaimed a caliphate (Isis or Daesh) under the strict application of the Sharia, and began a military expansion over Syria and Iraq. Extremist attacks in different European countries (Paris, Brussels, London) led to a series of air strikes and the intervention of Turkish and Iraqi troops against the Islamic State, which has virtually disappeared. The conflict, with its international implications, continues between government forces and rebel troops.